Churchill alleged­ly said this dur­ing his vis­it to the White House in Decem­ber-Jan­u­ary 1941. The Japan­ese had attacked Pearl Har­bor and Amer­i­ca was in the war. The encounter was con­firmed by Churchill’s body­guard, Wal­ter Thomp­son, and one of his sec­re­taries, Patrick Kin­na. On the strength of their com­ments I includ­ed it as “like­ly” in Churchill By Him­self.

The sto­ry goes that Roo­sevelt thought to call the new world body he hoped to orga­nize after the war the “Unit­ed Nations.” Excit­ed about the name, he wheeled him­self into Churchill’s room. There he found Churchill, as Har­ry Hop­kins, put it, “stark naked and gleam­ing pink from his bath.” Hop­kins repeat­ed his ver­sion of this remark (using “con­ceal” instead of “hide”) often enough to raise a pre­sump­tion in favour of its verac­i­ty. But per­haps not!

Churchill’s Recollection

Churchill nev­er con­firmed the wise­crack attrib­uted to him by Thomp­son and Kin­na. Queried by Roo­sevelt biog­ra­ph­er Robert Sher­wood, Churchill said: “I could not pos­si­bly have made such a state­ment as that. The Pres­i­dent him­self would have been well aware that it was not strict­ly true.” Churchill told Sher­wood he “nev­er received the Pres­i­dent with­out at least a bath tow­el wrapped around him.”

Of course, receiv­ing the Pres­i­dent in a bath tow­el may have been enough in Churchill’s mind tell King George VI (just after return­ing from Wash­ing­ton): “Sir, I believe I am the only man in the world to have received the head of a nation naked.”

Reader Comments: “Made in England. Size: Medium.”

I take the lib­er­ty of trans­lat­ing the amus­ing exchange with Anto­nio Car­los Da Cos­ta in the com­ments sec­tion below:

Sr. Da Cos­ta writes: “On Google I searched ‘Win­ston Churchill’s penis’ and locat­ed the item that shows: Churchill, Hitler, Roo­sevelt and Stal­in, with the out­line image of each penis. Why is Win­ston Churchill’s penis large and thin and the oth­ers are medi­um and thick? How did they get these pic­ture sketch­es? Spec­u­la­tions?

Response: I am sure it is con­nect­ed with two sto­ries, the first con­firmed by an aide, the sec­ond doubt­ful. Encoun­ter­ing Labour Par­ty leader Clement Attlee at the trough in the House of Com­mons loo, Churchill shuf­fled far­ther away. “A lit­tle stand-off­ish today, are we Win­ston?” Attlee asked. Churchill had a quick response. “Every time you social­ists see some­thing big you want to nation­al­ize it.” (Pri­vate Sec­re­tary David Pit­bla­do to William Man­ches­ter, 21 Octo­ber 1980.)

Less like­ly but equal­ly amus­ing is the leg­end of a ship­ment of British con­doms to Mur­man­sk as part British aid to Rus­sia. The British have only one size: “extra large.” So Churchill orders that each box be marked: “Made in Eng­land. Size: Medi­um.”